It seems that Linux Mint is picking up many Ubuntu users who would rather stay with Gnome 2 - we've been told that we can still choose Gnome 2 within Ubuntu, but that option will disappear with the next release, so Mint appears to offer a viable alternative.

But do we really know how long Mint will stay with Gnome 2? Is a switch to Mint merely delaying the inevitable?

Gnome 2 will not be supported by Gnome for very much longer as Gnome 3.0 has been released with it's new Gnome Shell so your respite will indeed be temporary there are ways of making Gnome 3 look and behave like Gnome 2 so all is not lost,And Debian Squeeze uses Gnome 2 and will for awhile yet though Debian is making noises of increasing it's rate of releasing new versions so even that is taking a gamble.So don't think you can play King Canute as this tide is already high.

Yes, unless somebody or some organisation takes up the baton of gnome 2 and runs with it, it will very soon disappear. What a shame; to kill something that is so brilliantly simple and effective!

Both gnome 3 shell and unity remind me of small smart phones, ridiculous for a large screen desktop, and if gnome 3 fallback with panels does not improve a great deal from the current in Fedora 15, that will not be any use to me either, as it is still not customisable in any way that I want.

heiowge wrote:You could just do what I've done and give up on Gnome completely to avoid Unity or Gnome 3 and switch to KDE (or as others have done, XFCE etc.)

From a personal point of view, you're spot on - I've already settled on OpenSuse and KDE for my own systems.

The reason I was seeking views on the Gnome2 issue is that I have until October to decide what to do with my Windows XP refugee friends, who are currently on Ubuntu 10.04LTS. KDE is about as remote from XP as Gnome3/Unity, so I think they will need to be pushed in the XFCE direction.

Am I right in thinking that XUbuntu is an official spin, whereas LUbuntu is not?

It will be interesting to see how long Mint can keep Gnome 2 going - I myself am a very satisfied Mint user and I am glad that they are.

For Gnome 2 users who want to retain a conventional fully featured desktop and would prefer not to run KDE 4, the viable long term answer may be XFCE rather than a Gnome 2 fork. XFCE is very customisable and can be set up to emulate Gnome 2 quite closely.

stuartpalmer wrote:... what to do with my Windows XP refugee friends, who are currently on Ubuntu 10.04LTS. KDE is about as remote from XP as Gnome3/Unity, so I think they will need to be pushed in the XFCE direction.

If they're refugees from XP, KDE is pretty close in appearance to Windows 7, with the added advantages of Linux (less crashes, more secure, etc, etc...) I laughed my head off when I saw KDE for the first time then windows vista came out and I thought it looked like MS had taken all the cool looking bits of KDE, stripped out the working bits and then done to it what ME did to Win2000.